This invention relates to improvements in a safety device for a balustrade of a passenger conveyor such as an escalator, a moving footway or the like disposed on a guide port thereof through which a moving handrail involved enters the interior of the mechanical portion of the passenger conveyor.
In order to prevent one portion of a cloth of any person or his or her finger from being pulled into a guide port of the type referred to, it has been previously practiced to dispose a barrier member in front of the guide port on the associated leaving landing. The barrier member has been generally formed into a box approximating a cube of a material capable of being easily broken with a very low pressure, for example, foamed polystyrene. The barrier member serves as a safety device. If any person has one portion of his or her cloth or his or her finger pulled into a gap formed between the barrier member and the adjacent portion of the moving handrail then the barrier member can readily be broken with the resulting pressure to sound and scatter. Thus the person tends to surprisedly jump back or aside or to retract his or her finger. At that time the barrier member has already scattered and therefore this retracting operation can be performed without any hindrance. In this way the person has been able to be prevented from undergoing serious accidents of the human body.
Also if any person falls down on the floor adjacent a departure landing of an escalator to tend to be partly pulled into a gap between the landing and that portion of the associated moving handrail turned in its traveling direction then that portion of his or her body tending to by pulled into the gap is blocked by the barrier member thereby to be prevented from being caught by the turned portion of the moving handrail.
However, in order to facilitate the installation thereof, conventional barrier members have been shaped to form the gap between the same and the mated parts sufficient to permit a passenger's finger to be readily pulled thereinto. Further since passengers go past the departure landing for the escalator, the provision of the barrier member in the form of a box approximating a cube on the landing might cause a danger that some of the persons would fall down on the landing because they stumble over the barrier member. At that time the barrier member might be broken. This has led to an objection that the safety device would have been broken for reasons other than those proper therefor.